Saudis arresting reform activists; calling them terrorists.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie


Are countries only allowed to introduce democracy if they vote pro-american?

I am suggesting that it is not in the West's interest to support democratization in countries that might be taken over by the terrorists. (Yes, feel the cynicism grow!)

[Zkribbler]

I'm suggesting that, although universal sufferage is the eventual goal, this is not a wise place to start out. The citizenry must get a grip on the fact that democracy cannot grant them their wildest dreams just because the politicians promise them and the people vote for them.

Both in Britain and in the U.S., democracy was a slow, ever growing process. But in France, the san coulottes started chopping heads off, and in Palestine, the people voted for Hama's promises of victory against Israel.

For absolute monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, I would think a good place to start would be with the highly educated. Get a somewhat democractic process started and then let it slowly spread downwards.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Saddam the Reformer.

Saddam was a reformer in certain limited ways. He was a bloody tyrant if you politically opposed him in any way of even just looked at him wrongly but if you kept out of politics and said the right things then at least he did push a western-socialist style education for everyone which expanded women's rights, attacked religious fundimentalism, and introduced ideas like union representation. In actual execution it was of course corrupted to serve the dictatorship but at least there was a 30 year period were everyone was educated that women were equal to men and fundimentalist teachings were repressed.

If the civil war ended in a reasonably equitable manner (which might happen but it is a long shot) then the country likely would be more progressive then places like Iran or Saudi Arabia. The problem now is that the civil war makes people fall back into identity politics which break down along sectarian lines thus reenforcing religious fundimentalism and hatred of the other.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


I shall anxiously await the input of your wisdom

I'm home briefly.

5 more hours to go, time enough for me to collect my thoughts.

[DRoseDARs]

Bah, what a craptastic week.

*sigh*

Anyhoo, this will be long-winded but here goes: The problems with tying the right to vote with education, as I see it. We'll use the US as the template. There's the problem of access. College costs money in the US and not everyone can afford it, at least no easily. Given that voter turnout has dropped for decades, tying the right to vote to one's ability to afford, attend, and eventually graduate college will not serve to increase turnout, only make those voting a little smarter about their vote. A large segment of the US population won't be arsed to bother; they aren't now and they already HAVE the right to vote for free at 18. How do you address that? Start in grade school educating children to civic duty and carry it through high school. That still doesn't solve the problem of financial shortcomings for college. For that, state and federal government needs to increase funding to grants and make student loans much more affordable. What I'd like to see is public education being compulsory from preschool to grade 15 (Preschool, kindergarten and grades all the way up from 1 to 15, 5 yrs-old to 21) and that the entire education system is fully funded before anything else. Instead of trying to cram so much of any given subject into any given grade, certain core concepts can stretch a little in adjacent grades. The additional later grades could give a basic college education to every citizen and prepare them for life as adults. As it is right now, high school does next to nothing to prepare you. Once you've completed that, you can decide to continue on to a more specific area of study to get a degree/masters/PhD. And the right to vote. Also, tie the military draft, alcohol/tobacco to 21 as well; driving should stay where it is. I know Ozzy is probably gonna have a fit, but hear me out: While many teenagers can be more mature than their peers, they are simply far outnumbered by their immature peers and we have to err on the side of caution. For politics, the vast majority of teenagers are influenced by their parents' politics and won't really devote any energy deciding for themselves whether they want to vote as their parents do or not. By extending the compulsory education time period and tying the right to vote to it (as well as the military service age as it's just flat out wrong to say someone is old enough to die but not old enough to vote, drink, or smoke), we allow students more time to decide for themselves. I would hope more would decide to vote classic liberal, but it's entirely up to the student. However, there's another concern that's much harder to address: How do you keep the government from unduly influencing public education one way or another politically? We've seen how successful rightwing whackjobs have been at introducing their "A majik faerie in teh sky did it!" junk science into the national discussion. And (to throw a bone to conservatives) how do we keep leftwing nonsense out as well? I don't have a good answer for this problem. I do think the federal government, and not state governments, should be responsible for creating the curriculum so that it is uniform. As it is, the vast majority of public school districts aren't going to be accepting serious discussion of the "majic faerie" theory any time soon to their science classes. Perhaps the state-level makes that so, I don't know.

Now, how do you incorporate any of this in Iraq or the Middle East in general? You don't. The region is in shambles and with war brewing with Iran/Syria, you worry about stopping that first or at least mitigating the damage it does to civilian infrastructures, both pre- and post-war. Lebanon and Iraq used to have fairly decent universities, but separate wars have destroyed them. Iran also has a good college system, but with the religious poobahs breathing down their backs and the United States threatening the country, students there are in a very tough position. War will make their universities go the way of Iraq's and Lebanon's. A great deal of money should have gone into not war but infrastructure and international peace forces to guard that infrastructure until such time as local forces could handle things themselves responsibly. We shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, but it was going to happen no matter what and I fear the same may be true of Iran.

[Kuciwalker]

Paragraphs exist for a reason.

[DRoseDARs]

I had a wtf Pekka? moment, so sue me.